Please Pass the Grain of Salt

Dinner with Mahmoud Abbas.

Gabriel Schoenfeld

July 15, 2010 10:05 AM

If Israel and its neighbors are ever to arrive at a stable and genuine peace, Palestinian incitement of hatred –and its predilection for murderous acts – must cease. It is an elementary proposition, and one to which the Palestinian Authority has unambiguously agreed. The Oslo Accords are clear: The Interim Agreement of September 28, 1995 states that the parties "shall seek to foster mutual understanding and tolerance and shall accordingly abstain from incitement, including hostile propaganda, against each other and . . . shall take legal measures to prevent such incitement by any organizations, groups or individuals within their jurisdiction."

But the torrent of Palestinian incitement, including by highest officials of the Palestinian Authorities itself, has never diminished, let alone stopped. Just this month, Mahmoud Abbas could be found heaping praise (in Arabic) on Mohammed Oudeh for “a life filled with the struggle, devoted effort, and the enormous sacrifice of the deceased for the sake of the legitimate problem of his people." Among other glorious achievements, Oudeh was the architect of the assault on the 1972 Munich Olympics that slaughtered 11 Israeli athletes.

Mahmoud Abbas was in the U.S. to meet President Obama earlier this month, and at a Washington dinner the always intrepid Elliott Abrams confronted him directly with examples of Palestinian incitement, including his own. Abrams recounts Abbas’s grotesquely inadequate response and tells us what it means in the New YorkDaily News. It is must reading.